Up in the Air: The Icarus Foundation Blog

First Online Student Symposium on Tourism and Climate Change Announced

The Icarus Foundation has announced they will host a one-day online student symposium on tourism and climate change in spring, 2010.  The conference will be student led with student content.  Participants in the forum will include tourism industry representatives, university and college students and faculty members and The Icarus Foundation.  Confirmed sponsors so far include Intrepid Travel, i-to-i and the Tourism Industry Association of Canada. Originally planned to include the Canadian institutions only, initial response has included a great deal of interest from American students and institutions, so the Foundation recently decided to widen the scope to be North American focused.

Scheduled for March 29,2010, students will present and discuss project work that explore the issues and possible solutions surrounding climate change and tourism. Through interactive presentations, including aspects of video, audio, and text, students will foster discussion on the next steps needed for the industry to move forward meaningfully. 

Recent years have seen an increase in research on tourism and climate change amongst academics.  Additionally, dialogue on climate change amongst the tourism industry has also increased.  The goal of this symposium is to connect students to industry in North America on the topic of climate change.  This project is very timely given the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15) scheduled for December of this year.

Contrary to existing research and dialogue, there is little action amongst the tourism industry to mitigate the negative impacts of tourism and few research studies or projects exist that provide actionable tools through which industry can easily learn.  As students will be the leaders of tomorrow and move into leadership positions within the hospitality and tourism industry, it is important that they have the opportunity to share information and engage in dialogue.

Students, speak with your faculty member to ensure that your university or college is participating! For more information on participating in or sponsoring this event please contact aousmand @ theicarusfoundation.com, or go to www.theicarusfoundation.com

Download Studenthandout

Times of Change- The Tourism 2023 Vision

On October 8, 2009, Forum for the Future, a non-profit sustainable development organization, introduced its project the “Tourism 2023 Vision” at the ABTA travel conference.  The purpose of this project is to help the UK outbound travel and tourism industry understand the challenges it faces in planning for a sustainable future.  This ‘what if’ report outlines what could happen to tourism in the future as a result of climate change, population growth and shortages of oil and other resources through the exploration of four possible scenarios that could impact the future state of the tourism market. Major UK based tour operators, airlines, cruise companies and travel agents participated in the exercise and signed the Tourism 2023 Vision, committing themselves, individually and as a group, to creating a sustainable industry by 2023.

 

In summary, these Tourism 2023 scenarios include “Boom & Bust” where new technologies make green traveling easier and where an aging population takes medical holidays for cheap operations elsewhere. “Divided Disquiet” where political instability will have made many world destinations unattractive to tourists, except for doomsday tourism where people will flock to see rapidly disappearing natural resources. “Price and Privilege” where the rising costs of fuel and energy will make long distance travel too expensive for most people. “Carbon Clampdown” where legislative measures such as personal carbon credits combined with increased awareness on the risks of climate change could result in a reduced demand for international travel.

 

This vision for action that resulted from the 18 month project is based on six principles: protecting the environment, developing employees, providing customers with mainstream sustainable products, ensuring that destinations benefit from tourism, innovating to create sustainable transport and resorts and developing a business which is environmentally, socially and financially sustainable. The group of signatories are expected to focus on measures for promoting low carbon destinations and travel options, reducing landfill waste, better returning economic benefits back to local communities, and improving resort water efficiency.

 

The project has been successful in drawing attention to some challenges the tourism industry will face in achieving sustainability.  It has also been successful in convincing businesses and organizations that their practices must change to ensure sustainability in the future of tourism.  Currently only targeting the UK tourism industry, these principles could be applied to the Canadian tourism industry to further the conversations on sustainable tourism and act as a catalyst for action.  

Proposed Polar Bear Habitat - Can it Help?

On Thursday, October 23, the US Department of The Interior proposed the designation of more than 200,000 square miles of land, sea and ice for the purposes of protecting the shrinking polar bear population. The proposed habitat runs along the northern coast of Alaska, and would be the largest single designation of protected habitat for any species, encompassing the entire range of the two polar bear populations that exist on American land and territorial waters.

Officials state that the cause of the bears shrinking range is directly related to the disappearance of sea ice caused by global warming. “Proposing critical habitat for this iconic species is one step in the right direction to help this species stave off extinction, recognizing that the greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of sea ice caused by climate change,” said Thomas Strickland, the assistant interior secretary for fish, wildlife and parks.

It appears though, that the bears’ habitat will not be set aside as a refuge and that oil and gas exploration and other activities could in fact continue under the terms of the species act and other laws. Just this week the Shell Oil Company was given permission to drill in the proposed protected area.

Can this be an effective measure then?  Conservation groups are concerned, with what appears to be good reason. 

Were the designation approved, it would require any commercial interest to show that any proposed activity, including oil drilling or shipping, would not destroy or adversely affect the bears’ habitat or accelerate the extinction of the species.  There are already concerns expressed by Alaskan officials that any such habitat protection will threaten the state's oil and gas industry.

Is this no more than recognizing a need for protected habitat?  The Interior Department is required to publish a final critical-habitat rule by June 30, 2010.

An Invitation to The World From

The Invitation starts quite simply as, "Dear World..."

When - Saturday October 24. What - The International Day of Climate Action. Where - Everywhere    

Expert climatologist—NASA’s James Hansen—and his team showed in recent studies that if we let the amount of carbon in the atmosphere go above 350 parts per million, then no longer can we have a planet “similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.”

Currently we are at 390 parts per million.  And we are seeing the impacts, Arctic melt, massive drought, changing weather patters.  Scientists warn that we are dangerously close to the tipping point and in order to avoid run-away global warming, emission levels must begin to fall no later than 2016.  But first, we need a  new global treaty to be in effect the moment the first phase of Kyoto ends at the end of 2012.  That’s what the 15th Convention of the Parties in Copenhagen is all about.

The International Day of Climate Action is a day of action.  To date more than 150 nations are participating, Canadians Sheila Watt-Cloutier and David Suzuki are joining dozens on internationally recognized explorers, scientists, activists and authors to send a message to our world leaders that they want results from Copenhagen. 

To find an event near you check out http://www.350.org/, and we'll see you this Saturday!

The Icarus Team

 

Know Your Numbers!

The climate change debate can easily get bogged down in too many complex concepts and a plethora of numbers. As confusion cannot be allowed to become an excuse for inaction, Icarus Foundation founders have focused on simplifying the data. There are currently 5 key numbers you need to monitor:

2 degrees centigrade: this = the maximum increase in average global temperatures associated with pre-industrial times that will ensure the planet remains habitable and productive for humans. 

350 parts per million - this is the concentraton of CO2 in the atmosphere that needs to be maintained if the average temperature is not to exceed the desirable 2 degree max increase.

800 metric tonnes of greenhouse gas - this is the amount of greenhouse gas (CO2 and other gases) that are being spewed into the atmosphere per second, largely as a result of human activity.

2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas  - this is the amount of greenhouse gas (CO2 and other gases) that are being spewed into the atmosphere per month, largely as a result of human activity.

80% - this is the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that need to be reduced annually over 1990 levels if warming above 2 degrees centigrade is to be avoided. Note: politicians, such as the G8 leaders, enjoy the rhetoric of reduction but rarely are specific about the baseline date - a tendency that renders their intentions meaningless and ineffective and avoids accountability. 

We'll add more numbers as we think aid understanding and stimulate action. 

These are the balls you need to keep your eye on (see our previous post: Keeping Your Eye on the Ball), and, to help you,  there are two key carbon-related indicators presented on this site here. 

Thanks to an enlightened banker, Kevin Parker, Head of Deutsche Asset Management, we have excuse for taking our eye of 2 of five numbers. On June 18th, 2009, a huge electronic billboard was unveiled in the heart of`New York. Based on the previous example of a counter that managed national debt, this one tracks the volume of greenhouse gas emissions being spewed in real time into the earth's lief supporting atmosphere. For those of you who preview a short video story, here's the PBS account: 

Canada Ranked Last in G8 on Climate Action

Normally a birthday is an occasion for pride and celebration but not so for Canada, whose citizens received a wake up call on July 1st from the WWF scorecard of progress on climate change.

Only five months ahead of the crucial global climate negotiations in Copenhagen, the 2009 edition of the annual WWF-Allianz G8 Climate Scorecards shows that while some effort and improvement had been made by several G8 countries, action remains insufficient to set the world on a course that would keep temperatures well below the dangerous 2 degree Celsius increase. Monthly evidence for that, by the way, is available on this site via the Carbon Meter here. 

Despite Canada's reliance on renewable clean hydro sources for electricity, the average Canadian emits some 24 tons of CO2 per person - twice as much CO2 as the average German and SIX times more than the average Indian. 

The following two graphics reinforce the message that Canada could and should do far better.

"Nowhere else on earth do fewer people steward more resources, yet Canada now stands dead last amongst the G8 nations in protecting our shared home from the threat of dangerous climate change." observed Keith Stwart, Director fo WWF-Canada's Climate Change Campaign. "Canada's future lies in creating green jobs on a living planet, not in becoming an energy sweatshop for the world." 

But there is good news from some parts of the tourism industry. British Columbia's Partnership for Sustainable Tourism is now very much up and running with three highly talented staff and a number of key initiatives already at the detailed planning phase (a web site to be launched very shortly); Whistler's Centre for Sustainability is also well staffed and busy helping both local business reduce emissions and advise other municipalities such as Williams Lake on how to develop a sustainable plan (see article here); and the Icarus Foundation has acquired a new Board and new Executive Director and developed a membership program designed to fund a range of practical services - do please visit our updated web site.

I am sure there are many other exciting things being done to ensure that tourism meets its responsibilities despite the harsh economic times and  encourage Canadian readers to comment on this post and contribute more examples of progress, no matter how modest. 

But much work remains, so the birthday party is over now and help is needed to restore Canada's reputation as a country whose people care. Our commitment to peace and social justice in the post war period enabled us to enjoy prestige in the decision-making capitals of the world. That position has since been eroded and Canada is increasingly out-of-step with the values and policies of other wealthy industrialised nations. What's the point of obtaining substantial increases in marketing funding, if Canada's appeal as a pristine, wild and natural land is tarnished and its leaders are seen as lacking a sense of care for the future? 

Instantaneous global connectivity, digital communications and networked communities are empowering people and communities from Tehran to western China to Heathrow. In the UK, travelers are enabled to chose flights on the basis of the environmental performance of the carrier - see Fly Smart - and initial research suggest that some 57% will chose responsibility over price. 

It's only a matter of time before the scorecard approach is applied to tourism destinations, so Canada had better to be ahead of this trend than trying to play catch up. 

Postscript - hot off the press

Ironically, some five minutes after I had pressed "send", the this  article from Times Online  flashed across my Tweetdeck seemingly refuting my statement regarding Canada's reputation. It appears that Canada is held in high esteem for cutting after all - not emissions but public spending and not the current government but a previous Liberal one. According to this article, Tories and civil servants are being advised as to how Canada reduced its heavy deficit... public spending in the UK is now running at 12% of GDP.

 

Birdsong in England, Hot Air in Washington & Bubbles in the Arctic - what's the connection?

I write this sitting quietly in a log cabin located in the midst of a lush and quintessentially English cottage garden. It's misty outside but the song birds are celebrating the close of another magnificent and a seemingly normal Spring day. So far this year, we've experienced a normal set of seasons - a cold winter, windy and showery spring and prospects of a hot summer ahead. Even Wimbledon is prepared with its new roof and there'll be strawberries and cream as usual with the chance to forget the financial meltdown - even while another meltdown continues to take place with disproportionately less fanfare and sense of gloom. It's in this context that a growing sense of complacency within the business community, and especially the tourism community, regarding the climate change threat, should come as no surprise. The financial crisis, the ensuing recession and the dramatic declines in visitors, revenues and yields have diverted our attention to less scary, more familiar issues.

Next week, the American travel industry will launch yet another campaign extolling the virtues of travel with the headline "Travel Matters!" suggesting that travel can be the primary engine of economic recovery and is good for our health.  The Q & A sheet in support of the campaign complains that business travel has been "mischaracterized" and makes the following arguments in defence of leisure travel:

Leisure travel is important because it’s essential to good health. Travelers rate their overall health one full point higher (on a scale of 1 to 5) while on vacation. And they receive three times more sleep after vacations and sleep almost 20 minutes longer. An annual vacation can cut a person’s risk of heart attack by 50 percent.

Of course "travel matters" but so does health care, the production of quality yet affordable food, the care of our elderly, the education and safety of our young etc. If the slogan was "Travel Cares" and was backed with the actions that tourism is taking to address the real issues facing humanity right now, I could back it.

In the meantime, "nature" knows nothing of our human issues.Nature simply obeys implacable laws with no regard to their impacts on our human psyches and what we consider to be our well being. Nature simply and relentlessly adapts. And adaptation is what is happening in the Arctic. As temperatures rise and more ice melts so the gazillions of microbes embedded in the permafrost start to feed on the decaying vegetable matter trapped beneath the surface. Their process of consumption - like ours - emits waste but their waste (methane gas)  is 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than Co2.

If you harboured any lngering doubts that climate change would seriously and intensively affect your life or that of your children, then think again and read this article or watch the video from the LA Times last week . Bubbles of warming, beneath the ice - Los Angeles Times.

Methane is one of the wild cards that the IPCC scientists recognized as potentially aggravating the problem but did not,  dare not, include in their forecasts.

Moral of this tale? If we want to enjoy the birdsong and avoid the bubbles. we'll need more than rhetoric and hot air......

Comments on Discussion Paper

Just in case you haven't seen it, you can download the Icarus Discussion paper on Climate Change here.

Download icarus_discussion_paper.pdf

We welcome and really want your comments, creative ideas and concerns - so please send your comments by clicking on "comments" at the foot of this post.

Gore Takes a Cue from Wayne Gretzky

While I've never really been that interested in sport and the finer points of hockey always eluded me, I always remember the confession of Canada's most succesful players, Wayne Gretzky,  who said, "I pass the puck not to where they are but where they are going to be."

Gore quoted Gretzky in an impassioned speech delivered in Bali a few hours ago talking about the need not just to anticipate (which is what I think the hockey player had in mind) but also to hold space for a player who clearly wasn't yet playing the same game. He urged the participants in the climate change conference not to wait on the US to create an agreement but to "move forward keeping a large blank space in your mandate, saying our mandate is incomplete but we're moving forward in the hope that it will be filled in by the time we have a treaty in Copenhagen at the end of 2009". Gore also said that the US was not the only country that could move forward and that directing anger at the US delegation could result in the entire world losing momentum.

I read into his comment  a request for charity (such an old fashioned word nowadays) as well as anticipation and urgency - wise counsel that reflects the growing awareness of people everywhere that spaceship earth does not have lifeboats; we're all in this together;  and that, unless we see ourselves as  one global family, able to both coach the reluctant as well as calm the reckless we make matters infinitely worse.

Here is a link to the most recent summary of Gore's Bali speech.

For more inspiration - below is a video of Gore's acceptance speech in Oslo on December 10th.

When I think of all that lonely travelling through all those soulless airports and mindless, inconsistent airport security checks that he had to do with a bunch of slides before enough of us "got it" , I feel deeply indebted.......

 

Take a Stand, Exercise your Political Will

Anna Pollock

I am writing this several thousands of miles away from Canada. Sadly I am not in Bali but in Europe, from which vantage point it is less and less possible to ignore the way in which Canada's reputation for fairness, forward thinking and international diplomacy is being trashed so visibly by a Premier who can think only of his own self interest. The issue is no longer about left and right politics and shaming others; it is simply about taking the right action now. The western world has grown prosperous and mean spirited on the back of cheap oil and cheap credit. Both may be diminishing in supply and that will bring its own set of challenges and conflicts.

Right now, however, as Canadian citizens, we have a chance in Bali to do the right thing; to create a multilateral, multi-national agreement and, thereby, show that each of recognizes that nature knows no political boundaries. We're all in this together, rich and poor...., urban or rural, environmentalist or capitalist.

But our democratic rights are curtailed. Unless we petition our leaders between elections, they appear to be able to do what they wish or think they can get away with. many are cut off from voter sentiment by advisors, pundits, spin merchants. There's a small window available. Avaaz - a social network of concerned citizens invites Canadians to expres their concerns by signing a petition.

I reproduce their e-mail in full below. Click on Avaaz above or the first link in their email below to get to the petition form quickly.

Dear friends,

Right now, a major UN summit in Bali has just a few days left to hammer out an agreement on stopping catastrophic climate change. But instead of helping out, Canada is actually sabotaging the UN talks! On Saturday, experts gave us the global "fossil" award for being the worst country in the world on climate change.

There's still a few days left to save Canada's reputation -- and the climate -- but we need a massive democratic roar to remind our Prime Minister what Canada is all about, and stop him from blocking the world at Bali. Click below to sign the petition and we'll advertize the number of signatures we get in an ad campaign across Canada this week. Our goal is to get 25,000 people to sign in just 3 days before the ads run. Click below, then forward this email to all your friends and family right away:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/another_canadian_climate_crime/4.php

Enough is enough. Prime Minister Harper's short-sighted, undemocratic and big oil-driven policy on climate change is damaging the world and destroying our image as a good country. We're supposed to be the nice guys, who try to do the right thing in the world.

The vast majority of Canadians are hopping mad on this issue -- we can win this. We just need to show Harper how serious we are that he change course. Sign up now and forward this email to everyone you know - we've got just 3 days to hit 25,000 signatures!

With much respect and hope,

Ricken Patel,
Avaaz.org

PS - Here are links to some more info on this:

David Suzuki (the Nature of Things) calls the government's spin on climate change "humiliating" and "ludicrous"
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/283829

The former editor-in-chief of CBC news discusses the damage done by Canada's climate policy to our international reputation:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_burman/2007/12/canada_flounders_on_issue_of_c.html

The Fossil of the Day Award site:
http://www.avaaz.org/fossils